Lionsgate Appoints First Chief AI Officer to Lead Studio AI Strategy

Lionsgate announced on February 5, 2026, that it has hired Kathleen Grace as its first Chief AI Officer, marking the studio's most significant organizational commitment to artificial intelligence to date. Grace, who previously served as Chief Strategy Officer at Vermillio, will report directly to CEO Jon Feltheimer and join the company's senior decision-making team.

The appointment comes 16 months after Lionsgate announced its partnership with Runway in September 2024, and signals a shift from experimental AI initiatives to centralized executive oversight. Grace's mandate spans three areas. She will provide AI tools to serve filmmakers' creative vision, identify operational efficiencies across production, marketing, distribution and administration, and spearhead efforts to protect the studio's intellectual property and talent partnerships.

From IP Protection to Studio Leadership

Grace brings specialized experience in digital rights management and AI licensing. At Vermillio, she built systems allowing content owners and talent to track, authenticate, and receive compensation when their work appears in AI training datasets. That platform addressed one of the industry's most contentious AI debates. How to ensure creators are paid when their performances, voices, or likenesses train generative models.

Her background also includes operational experience in digital media. Grace previously headed New Form, a digital studio backed by Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, and Discovery Communications, where she developed over 40 pilots and sold nearly 25 series to networks including TBS, Freeform, and Quibi. She also spearheaded YouTube's global Spaces initiative, establishing creator studios in Los Angeles, New York, London, and Tokyo.

The Runway Partnership Context

Lionsgate's September 2024 deal with Runway committed the studio to training a proprietary AI model on its library of over 20,000 titles. That catalog includes major franchises such as The Hunger Games, John Wick, Twilight, and Saw. The partnership positioned Lionsgate as the first major Hollywood studio to formally license its content for custom model training.

At CES 2026, Lionsgate Vice Chairman Michael Burns described the potential of AI tooling to enable a new generation of filmmakers, comparing them to the emergence of directors like Spike Jonze and Sofia Coppola. That vision suggests the studio views AI as an authorship tool rather than purely an automation layer. Grace's role will involve translating that strategic vision into operational reality while managing the complex questions around credit, compensation, and creative control.

Strategic Scope Beyond Production

Unlike narrower technical roles, Grace's position encompasses operational domains beyond filmmaking. The studio explicitly cited AI applications in marketing, distribution, and administrative functions as part of her remit. This scope reflects broader industry trends where studios are exploring AI for trailer generation, localization, audience targeting, and workflow optimization.

The announcement coincided with Lionsgate's third quarter earnings, which showed 15% revenue growth to $724.3 million, with the motion picture division growing 35%. That financial context suggests the studio is investing in AI from a position of operational strength rather than as a cost-cutting measure during decline.

IP Protection as Competitive Moat

Grace's background in rights management positions her to address one of the industry's most pressing concerns. How to prevent unauthorized use of studio assets in competing AI models. While Lionsgate has licensed its library to Runway, protecting those same assets from being scraped by open source projects or rival platforms remains an active challenge.

This tension between controlled licensing and defensive protection mirrors dynamics emerging across the industry. Studios want the efficiency gains and creative tools that AI provides, but they also want assurance that their decades of IP investment won't be commoditized in foundation models trained without consent or compensation.

For filmmakers exploring generative tools, platforms like AI FILMS Studio provide access to models trained on properly licensed content. The question of provenance and rights clearance is becoming increasingly material as studios like Lionsgate formalize their AI strategies and potentially scrutinize the training sources behind third party tools.

Broader Industry Implications

Lionsgate is the first major Hollywood studio to create a C-suite AI role, but the move follows similar executive appointments across technology and media companies. The decision to elevate AI strategy to the senior leadership team, rather than treating it as a technical function within IT or production, indicates the studio views generative tools as foundational to future operations.

Grace's appointment also reflects the complexity of managing AI initiatives that span creative, legal, financial, and technical domains. Her role will require coordinating with filmmakers who want access to new tools, lawyers negotiating talent protections, finance teams evaluating ROI, and engineers implementing systems.

The structure of her role, reporting directly to the CEO and sitting on the senior decision-making team, suggests Lionsgate is treating AI as a strategic priority rather than an operational experiment. Whether other studios follow with similar appointments will indicate how seriously the industry takes centralized AI governance.

For independent filmmakers and emerging creators, the formalization of studio AI strategies has practical implications. As major players like Lionsgate define how they will use generative tools while protecting their IP, those policies will shape the broader ecosystem of licensing, attribution, and compensation. Platforms like Musical AI have raised funding specifically to solve attribution problems, reflecting the growing importance of provenance tracking across the content industry.

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Sources

Lionsgate: "Lionsgate Names Leading Technology Executive Kathleen Grace to be Chief AI Officer" Published: February 5, 2026 Press Release via Lionsgate Corporate Communications

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